On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.

Sunday, September 1, 1996

Comments: The odd thing about Neal Stephenson's Best Novel win for The Diamond Age is not that he won the award - he deserved to. But rather, it is that this is the first time Stephenson appears on a Hugo list in any capacity. This is, I think, an important development. Traditionally, a writer would spend the early part of his career writing shorter fiction, getting it published in the various science fiction and fantasy oriented magazines, maybe garner a few nominations for their short work, and build their career for a while before tackling the challenge of writing a novel. But while Stephenson doesn't mark the end of that model, he certainly represents the changing nature of the publishing world. By the 1990s, short fiction, quite simply, wasn't as important as it had been in prior decades. I'm not certain, but it seems that leapfrogging the process of sharpening one's skills for a couple years with shorter fiction before tackling a novel-length work is problematic for genre fiction as a whole. It can work - witness the high quality of Stephenson's work - but I think something is being lost. For fans, there is less short fiction being produced, and for writers, there are fewer and fewer markets for them to make a living while honing their skills.

In happier news, 1996 was the year that my favorite television show of all time won its first Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation when Babylon 5 took home the rocket trophy for the season two episode The Coming of Shadows. As far as I'm concerned, Babylon 5 should have won the Hugo in every year that it was eligible, but didn't. In this cycle of Hugo voting Straczynski took the rather unusual step of suggesting that fans vote for one episode of the season so as to concentrate the fan vote into one bloc, which explains the absence from the ballot of other great season two episodes like Confessions and Lamentations, Comes the Inquisitor, and The Fall of Night. I also have to wonder why Apollo 13 is on the nominating ballot. Granted it is a great movie, and I love it as much as anyone, but it is decidedly not science fiction or fantasy, so why was it nominated for a Hugo Award?

Other Finalists:
Bob Eggleton for Dankden by Marc Laidlaw
Bob Eggleton for Tide of Stars by Julia Ecklar
George H. Krauter for Renascance by Poul Anderson
Gary Lippincott for Tea and Hamsters by Michael Coney

Best Semi-Prozine

Winner:

Locus edited by Charles N. Brown

Other Finalists:Crank! edited by Bryan CholfinInterzone edited by David Pringle

The New York Review of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell, Ariel Haméon, and Tad Dembinski

Science Fiction Chronicle edited by Andrew Porter

Best Fanzine

Winner:

Ansible edited by Dave Langford

Other Finalists:Apparatchik edited by Andrew Hooper and Victor GonzalezAttitude edited by Michael Abbott, John Dallman, and Pam WellsFOSFAX edited by Timothy Lane and Elizabeth GarrottLan's Lantern edited by George "Lan" LaskowskiMimosa edited by Richard Lynch and Nicki Lynch

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